Day 438

1,140 Days to Go

Yesterday was both April Fools Day and Easter, an odd mix to be sure.
This morning I began to think about some of the strange things I had heard recently:
Ted Nugent called the Parkland kids mushy headed,
Laura Ingraham had attacked one of them personally saying he whined about not getting into four colleges he wanted to (whether he said anything in this regard I haven’t heard),
Dave Brat’s office says the only way to fix health care is to first let Obamacare fall apart (and they are doing whatever they can to make that happen),
The head of the VA was booted out because he wouldn’t privatize the VA (there are emails between Trump appointees saying so).
So what do all these things have in common?
Two things:
1 – They are all right wing tactics and ideas,
2 – There is nothing constructive in any of it.

Bernie Sanders was on Face the Nation and asked about problems at the VA. Yes, he said there are problems, but it’s a huge government agency and by and large the people using it like it and want to work to improve it. This is not what the Koch brothers want. He said they are the most powerful political force in America today. They want, as they always do, to privatize it. Why? So they can get their hands on some of the money. One thing is clear to me. Insurance companies say they need to make a profit. That means prices will go up. How much? In the case of the private health care industry 35-40% of the expense of the insurance is in marketing and huge salaries to the people who run them. Rick Scott is a perfect example. He figured out a scam to take over a lot of hospitals in Florida. I don’t remember anyone saying services got better in his hospitals. I do remember he was brought up on multiple counts of fraud in regards to Medicare overcharges to which he took the 5th over seventy times. He’s a criminal. Now, he’s governor of Florida. Nice work if you can get it.

Remember after Hurricane Katrina, New York and New Jersey were devastated. The real tragedy came when the home owners tried to get help from the insurance companies. The insurance companies had been kicked out of that business years before because of their corrupt and inept handling of earlier situations. State government agencies had been set up to do the job. Here’s the difference between private and public organizations that are tasked with doing the same job: public agencies have a task which is to help and solve the problem they are tasked with. Private organizations are in it to make a profit. Public agencies may have some problems, but their goal is totally different than a for profit company.

In all the blaming the right does, have you ever heard a solution? I have. It’s called hand waving and saying something like, “then a miracle occurs.” Or “God, will intervene.” But in terms of actual solutions – no. Nutty solutions – yes. Solutions based on fact – no. In fact the right has been moving farther and farther away from facts to religious goobelty-gook and “alternate facts” (ie things that have nothing to do with actual fact.)

Paul Ryan makes everyone who works in his office read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” or is it “The Fountainhead”? I forget. Doesn’t matter, both books talk about the ineptitude of large organizations and the corruptive power between economic giants and governments that can take place if left unchecked. Inspirational for sure. However, if you dig a little deeper you find out that Rand was blaming this on capitalism, but what she was describing was the Soviet system, and in her follow up book, “Atlas Shrugged,” her hero was based on a psychopath who kidnapped and dismembered a little girl, took the money he got to pay for tuition to a Christian religious college.

As Bernie pointed out in his brief time on the air, we have real problems that need to be addressed and the current administration and the Republican Party have no interest in any of that. In fact, they are going in the other direction. Or as Hillary Clinton so succinctly stated, the states that voted for Trump are looking backwards and the ones that voted for her are looking forward.

Which way do you want to go? Coal, fossil fuels, pollution, degradation of our planet, controlled by a few or would you prefer good health, a clean world, vibrant economy, where we all have a voice and work together to solve problems – not point fingers?

In one of the most bizarre interviews – no, the most bizarre – of the week: Tim Scott and Trey Gowdy were interviewed on Face the Nation. They have written a book together. They are good friends. That in and of itself is bizarre, but then to hear Tim Scott say Trey Gowdy was always looking for the truth in his investigations of Benghazi and Russian collusion was startling. Trey went on to accuse the media of inflating things and saying the Adam Schiff keeps saying there is collusion and they (he and Nunes I guess) have been waiting for months for Schiff to produce this evidence. Excuse me, but (to quote Arlo Gutherie) “I think it takes a lot of damn gall” to say stuff like that when you yourself have done more than anyone, except perhaps Nunes, to subvert and undermine the truth. Your investigation into Benghazi, the 9th one by Congress, revealed no new facts, but did show your willingness to selectively redact statements to make them appear what they were not. Your belittling commentary before asking questions I found stunning. I especially liked it when you did it to James Comey, throwing in that you had been a prosecutor, and Mr. Comey very politely explained some basic points of law to you. Some of these legal points, any prosecutor worth a hoot should have known, but you got to learn them on national TV. You? The Truth? To quote Jack Nicholson, “You can’t handle the truth.”

And so, we continue down this swirling mess that has been created, and could have so easily been avoided. The White House, it is reported, is silent. As in, nobody there to make noise, because people have left and no one is filling there spots. The Green Room at Fox doesn’t have enough buffoons left to do it. The only sounds are from the Old Executive Building where a bunch of frat boy like antics are going on (literally), and they are the ones tasked with finding “the best people” to do the jobs.

Sad.

1,140 Days to Go

PS I can’t read the Japanese but I think it says, “Time to kick some ass.”